


hindsight

by ShipperTrash140109



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Cheating, F/M, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Sexual Content, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-War, Unhappy marriage, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:41:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28648485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShipperTrash140109/pseuds/ShipperTrash140109
Summary: Hindsight was a funny thing. In that it was the worst goddamn experience one could possibly ever hope to encounter.Like when you’re fresh out of school and you think that broad who’s been eyeing you off since you were young starts meeting with you at the dances and has you over for tea with her nan and everybody is saying how much of a great wife she’d make and how ‘couples like you two don’t come around often.’Then all of a sudden you’re 23 years old, stuck in a marriage that neither you, nor your lass want a part of and you realise, in hindsight, that maybe you both would’ve been far better off if you’d never even met.
Relationships: Alex (Dunkirk)/Original Female Character(s), Alex (Dunkirk)/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4
Collections: Pre-war prompt





	hindsight

**Author's Note:**

> hello? angst? who is she?  
> this was lit rally inspired by the 'marriages dont last like they used to' 'women couldnt vote before 1975' meme thats going around on twitter atm.
> 
> yes i am still using elmslie as alex's last name, frick off.

Hindsight was a funny thing. In that it was the worst goddamn experience one could possibly ever hope to encounter.

Like when you’re fresh out of school and you think that broad who’s been eyeing you off since you were young starts meeting with you at the dances and has you over for tea with her nan and everybody is saying how much of a great wife she’d make and how ‘couples like you two don’t come around often.’ Then before long you’re swept up in the magic of planning out your whole life together and you’re watching her walk down the aisle with not a clue in your stupid, naïve brain that those plans take things like work and effort to bring to fruition.

Then all of a sudden you’re 23 years old, stuck in a marriage that neither you, nor your lass want a part of and you realise, in hindsight, that maybe you both would’ve been far better off if you’d never even met.

Alex is staring up at a ceiling that isn’t his own, with a girl that isn’t his own on his chest when he realises this. It’s possibly the worst post-coitus epiphany he’s ever had, in that it leaves a horrible, itching feeling in its wake. At least he’s sure it’s the thought that leaves that feeling behind, rather than the drying come on his stomach because this bird is a devout Christian and doesn’t believe in the concept of contraception but still thinks fucking out of wedlock is fair game so long as he doesn’t knock her up.

He hears her giggle softly, satisfied, as he carefully shifts her off of him to get to the bottom of the uncomfortable itching feeling. It’s after he’s wiped himself off that he comes to the conclusion that unfortunately it wasn’t bodily fluids that caused the sensation, but rather something along the lines of guilt and a metric ton of regret that irks him so.

Alex thinks she’s asleep as he pulls his pants and trousers back on- it’s only when she hums and rolls onto her back, pulling the sheets up her chest to preserve her modesty that he realises she isn’t. “Leaving already?” she asks politely, blinking at him in the low light, and he takes pause, looking her over. She really is gorgeous with her long dark hair and round lips, her cheeks still a little flushed, and her implied request he return to her bed is looking more and more tempting the longer Alex looks at her, _fuck_.

He sniffs loudly, nodding stiffly and looking back down to where he’s pushing his belt through the loops on his trousers. “Gotta get home, got work tomorrow, love- otherwise I’d probably stay” Alex explains, not looking back up at her. He’s not going to call her again, even though she’d given him her number. It’s not out of dislike for her, but Alex didn’t want to get the poor woman’s hopes up, didn’t want her adding two and two together and getting five. Getting her heart broken.

She looks more than a little disappointed, pushing her bottom lip out, so he gives her a kiss goodbye to ease her bruised feelings, even goes back in for another kiss after, for both her sake and a little bit of his own before he finally leaves. It’s cold as hell outside, and he hugs his arms to his chest the whole way home, teeth chattering all the while. By the time he steps through the door to his own home he feels like staying with the other lass might’ve been worth returning to the wrath of his _beloved_ wife the next morning.

“Where’ve you been?” speaking of, she’s waiting by the dinner table when he walks in, standing over a full plate, likely gone cold by now if her washed dishes next to the sink are anything to go off.

“Lads wanted a pint after work, had to walk Dick home after- you know how he is, could get drunk under the table by a pre-schooler, can’t hold his alcohol at all.”

She doesn’t look satisfied with his answer, and she makes her way over to him with a sceptical furrow to her brow, pausing once she’s only inches from him. He can tell she’s looking for something- the smell of another broad’s perfume, some stray lipstick staining his skin, anything. “Your dinner is cold,” she states, before turning away from him and making her way towards the bathroom. He knows she’ll run their hot water out and he’ll be left with a tepid shower to go with his cold supper and frozen skin. Revenge.

He can’t blame her, not really. The last time they’ve so much as kissed was months ago when they celebrated their fourth anniversary and he brought her flowers and took her out for tea, that also happened to be the last time they made ‘love,’ -not for her lack of trying, though. No doubt that’s what her friends tell her to do when she complains to them- to placate her husband with her womanly assets like a good wife. Though, even when they first married, she wasn’t like that- that’s why he liked her in the first place, she had spark to her, had attitude. Now she’s just trying to make the most out of what’s turned into a convenience marriage. If they divorced she’d be dishonoured, would likely struggle to find another husband, and she wouldn’t have half the privileges she does now without one. It was the kindest mercy he could offer her by toughing it out as her husband rather than throwing her out on her arse.

It’s that night that he lays awake, his wife as far from him on the mattress as physically possible, that he wonders what went wrong. How they could’ve fucked up so much in their marriage that they can’t even stand each other anymore, so much so that Alex seeks out affection in strangers- pretty men and prettier women. He never thought he’d be one to cheat on the ones he loved, but then a bitter thought enters his head- _do you even love her? Do you even **like** her?_

He did like her once, maybe even loved her, and she too liked and loved him once. Maybe they both should’ve known better than to leap at the first thing that’s put in front of them.

A couple of days later he decided to try and do right by her- to try and fix what he could of their relationship, to pull himself up by his bootstraps and be the husband everyone thought he was. To stop having relations with strangers and spend time with his wife, make her breakfast the mornings he wasn’t working and take her shopping for new clothes and whatnot. A chivalrous decision in theory.

It was a week after that when he saw a young man at the bar with short blond hair and a square jaw, and he slipped his wedding ring off his finger and into his pocket.

He gets home that night, a bone-deep satisfaction settled over him and the taste of another man still on his tongue when he faces the consequence for his actions. True, real consequences.

She’s sat at the dinner table crying when he steps through the door. Probably has been for a while seeing as the lights are off and she’s in the dark, head in her hands, shoulders shuddering every once and a while. He feels like he’s just stepped into an active crime scene, a sensation that only increases in its ferocity when she looks up at him, makeup smudged around her eyes and mouth from rubbing at falling tears.

“You’re cheating on me,” she says simply, as a matter of fact- with a sureness that leaves no room for him to disagree. There’s defeat rooted deep in her tone, like she’d been suspecting something of this nature for a while, and yet only found out the validity of her suspicions now. “A woman stopped by earlier asking around for you, I could tell why she was here,” her tone is flat save for the occasional waver as she fights back more tears.

“Fie, I”

“Don’t say a word, Alex!” she snaps at him, harshly, though he could tell by the firm set of her shoulders and the stiffness they held that that was only a taste of her fury. He walked slowly towards her, turning the light in the dining room on as he went, and she flinched at the flash of illumination. “I don’t understand… I knew we were bad but…” she struggled to finish her thought aloud, but he knew exactly what she was asking- they were queries he himself found himself struggling to answer every night.

He swallows thickly, shame bubbling up in his throat and making his ribs feel too tight around his lungs and heart to stay upright. “Effie, please.”

“You’re a horrible person, Alex!” she yells this time, shoving away from the table and standing abruptly, her chair screeching as it scrapes harshly over the floor.

Her anger is short lived, and she slumps back into her chair, looking weary now. Alex moves slowly towards her until he can kneel next to her chair, and she wraps her arms around his shoulders, holding him as she sobs into his jacket. “Why- why did we do this?” she asks over and over again, “why did we get married?”

He can’t answer her, just holds onto her. She smacks her forearm against his chest once, then twice as racking sobs shake her frame- it’s not hard enough to hurt, but it makes him flinch all the same. He feels tears sting the back of his eyes, he’d made his wife like this- downtrodden and falling to pieces from neglect and spite. She was his _wife_ and he couldn’t look after her, couldn’t uphold the vows he’d once made to her in even their basest form. He’d _failed_ in an irreparable way.

She tired herself out eventually, slumping almost fully against him, infrequent sobs shaking her as he stood her up and helped her to bed- tucked her in and laid next to her to offer the barest form of comfort. Though, when he woke later to go to the bathroom, he found them on opposite sides of the mattress all the same.

She didn’t leave- if Effie Elmslie was anything, it was stubborn. Though she did little to hide her distaste of him either, and she soon stopped cooking for him, spent her afternoons out with her friends instead of waiting for him to come home to dote after. Alex found himself back in the beds of others, still couldn’t shake the guilt- wondered if he was a horrible person for being able to still get on with it through said guilt, or if he was a good person for feeling the guilt in the first place.

Then their country is at war- one that was a while coming. Alex hears the notification over the radio as he fucks the son of a pastor in their area. The device was at first to try and drown out the sounds the men made in the throes of forbidden passion, but it turned quickly into the source of possibly the sanest idea the brunet had had in a long, long time.

They draft him- but of course they do, they’d be insane to turn away a tall, healthy young man like himself. It’s some of the best news he could imagine receiving nowadays.

“Fie! I have some news for you” he calls out as he arrives home that afternoon, and his wife looks shocked he even spoke to her at all- let alone called out for her. She swallows visibly, as if bracing herself for some very bad news. Alex can barely hold in his excitement at telling her.

“They were looking for young men to join the war effort- they drafted me- I’m gonna get shipped out.”

She looks horrified, and he understands why, hell, the whole country knew all the fucked-up things that happened in the last war- the displacement of families, the senseless murder of women, men and children alike. But this might be what they needed- the distance between them, the time apart to perhaps make their hearts grow fonder, if such a thing was possible by this point.

“Alex…” she says wearily, blinking at him almost disbelievingly. Though there’s confliction behind her eyes, and it makes her mouth hang open, wobbling like she’s trying to form the right words.

“C’mon darling, this will be perfect! You’ve wanted me gone for so long, and now you’ll get that- you can be the woman you want to be, until I come back at least.”

He’s almost giddy, standing there in the living room with his papers in hand, telling his wife he’s found the perfect solution for all that irks them.

Effie can’t find it within herself to say no. Perhaps hindsight was once again a most valuable and spiteful asset.

**Author's Note:**

> AYO BE SURE TO SMASH THAT COMMENT AND KUDOS BUTTON


End file.
